The Tears from Courcelette
by Eternal Evening
Summary: Walter's death was a terrible blow for all who loved him, even before they knew of it. The heartbreak felt by all those who truly lost him was incomparable-and recorded here with heartache.
1. Anne

**The Tears from Courcelette**

_Author's Note: Hi! This is my very first fanfic, and I tried to write with LMM's style. What do you think? I hope you like it! You might want to visit my livejournal/fiction press when one day I upload something I'm working on onto them-I'll post the link even if no one's interested, so you might as well check it out then. Please review honestly-I promise I'll try not to mind! It's a learning experience, anyway. But I believe that Anne fans will be perfectly Anne-ish. Enjoy! _

_P.S. I'd be delighted if you also PM me, like The Imagination Addict (thanks!) did. :D_

_Edit: To those who've read the story, this is a slightly later draft, with some minor edits made._

_**Chapter 1: Anne**_

The night was a deep, purple hue borrowed from a raven's wing, with the stars sorrowfully smiling over the treetops reaching up to heaven. Glen St. Mary was blissfully asleep, with all the silence and tranquility that come only when the sun is set and the moon arisen. Every such blessed night, one so much like the one before and yet subtly different, the tormented village folk forgot the bloodshed among their sons on the western front, forgot the worry and anxiety that haunting their shadows in the day and forgot the heartbreaking possibility of each son never again returning or, which was just as bad, if not worse, returning severely scarred and blighted.

Mrs Dr Blythe was lying in peaceful slumber in Ingleside, with Dr Blythe's arms around her, a vase of vividly red blossoms by her bed and a rare clear brow. Anne had, in the past two years, suffered more heartache than she had ever dreamt of in her fifty-one years. At a much younger age, she would have revelled in the romance of living in a war and sending one's sons off, but now—but now. She would gladly give anything to have the horrible death warrant over and done with and welcome her sons home.

She could scarcely remember the nights when she went to bed with a smile on her face and proceeded to spend the delightfully sweet moments before sleep found her in rainbow-tinted dreams and imaginings. Now, she often went to bed with a troubled expression that governed almost all the faces of the women in the village. She only thanked the Lord that each day passed with no heartbreak, and prayed fearfully for her sons to return home for her to hold to her bosom and never let go.

But tonight was one of the very few nights when Anne Blythe slept peacefully. It had been a beautiful day, with flowers soaking up the attention from the "eye of heaven" and the trees dancing a slow, gentle waltz to the caresses of the autumn breeze.

Anne had watched as Gilbert undressed for bed, her eyes unwilling to leave her husband's form. Conscious of a very beautiful pair of eyes on him, he turned and smiled affectionately at her.

She smiled back in return, a loving smile that had been changed by so many things—Matthew's death, Joy's death, the birth of all her children and the departure of her two sons, soon to be followed by her last. Her figure was just as slender and graceful, her hair just as red with a few strands of grey in it, but her large, limpid eyes were forever transformed. Once filled with laughter and dreams, they now brimmed with grief and sorrow, but they remained overflowing with love.

"It's been a beautiful day, Gilbert," Anne said tenderly, reaching for his hand. He sat down next to her on the bed and took both her gentle hands in his. "I walked down to the shore this evening and just thought about the happy years before. I saw how the waves nibbled gently at the sand and how it yielded under my feet. There must be fairies, I think." She laughed a laugh as sweet as the one that had rang through Green Gables, the House of Dreams and Ingleside throughout the years. "At my age! But oh, there must be. There's no other way to explain how such a blissful day could exist in these days…" Her voice faltered and she stopped speaking, unwilling to talk about the war.

"The world is beautiful in itself," agreed Gilbert, smiling down and cupping her face in the hand that had saved the life of so many, and yet wished only to hold a certain red-haired queen. His brown curls had thinned only a little, but greyed much more; his hazel eyes were wiser and more patient. "But I have only place in my heart for the most beautiful."

She smiled contentedly. A sweet, simple kiss passed between them and they lay down beneath the covers as Anne blew out the candle.

Now, "cold on the stroke of midnight", Anne awoke with a start, her mind as clear as if she hadn't slept that night. Her eyes wide, she looked out the window, but the night was still friendly above her, like a faithful friend come to lead her into its cool and cooling embrace. Carefully, she slipped Gilbert's arms off her and put on her kimono.

She tiptoed across the hall with her long braid trailing down her back to Rilla's room and silently pushed open the door.

Her seventeen-year-old daughter's face was pale and serene as the kiss of a moonbeam upon a quiet sea, but the set of her mouth spoke of unshed tears that threatened to fall off the string of her heart, and cultivated patience that comes only to those who feel and love keenly. At the foot of her bed, in a crib, lay Jims, happily in Dreamland, whose only difference from daytime for him was that his eyes were closed.

Anne rested her hand softly on the beautiful girl's cheek, and admired the fine chin inherited from her father. How womanly Rilla was growing! She kept the Junior Red Cross in close to perfect order, tended to Jims with all the patience and love of a mother and gave support to her own mother in the place of her absent brothers and sisters, with even Nan and Di gone and only Shirley left.

There was a time when Anne had worried that unambitious Rilla would never grow up. And yet—she would now give anything to have the sweet-lipped girl return from premature womanhood. She gazed at the creamy cheek, the dent above her rose-like lips, her "alabaster brow" and her glossy locks. In her sleep, Rilla stirred and a slight ghost of a smile attended the aforesaid lips.

Yes, Rilla was well. But there was a queer sensation around her heart that Anne couldn't explain. It made her uneasy—and uneasiness in the time of war was very unsettling.

There was a warm pressure on her back, and she turned around to see Gilbert. Dropping a kiss on her daughter's cheek, she took his hand and closed the door behind her.

"Is something wrong?" the doctor asked, concern saturating his voice.

"No," answered Anne, but she wasn't sure at all. Sighing, she returned to the bed and lay down, as did he.

She gazed earnestly into his hazel eyes. "I woke up a minute ago for no reason; I have this peculiar squeeze around my heart—no, it's nothing a doctor needs to worry about," she said hurriedly, perceiving the alarm in his eyes. "But it's so strange. I feel as if something's wrong, so I went to check on Rilla. She's fine. Even the night looks so happy. Oh, but this fluttering in my chest!" She buried her face in her hands.

Gilbert pried them away gently. "Are _you_ all right, Anne-girl?" His tone was a golden ray of sunlight interrupted by hard, unwelcome intrusions. "I don't like the way you look—you're too pale for night-time and your forehead is so cold."

Anne shivered. "Put your arms around me again, Gilbert," she implored, burying her face in his shoulder when he did. "I need to feel warm—I'm so desperately cold."

He rubbed her shoulders and pressed his anxious lips to her hair.

"Oh, this horrible war!" she cried bitterly. It was not until almost a week later that she would learn the name of the unwelcome sensation that had gripped her heart and refused to leave her soul—perhaps for the rest of her life.


	2. Una

_**Chapter 2: Una**_

_Author's Note: Hi again! Here's the second chapter, and I felt so sad when writing it. Poor Una. I posted and edited the first chapter yesterday, and till now I've got 4 reviews, 1 favourite and 2 author/story subscriptions! I have to thank you guys ever so much for making me squeal with delight (literally) every time I receive an email notification from FFnet, and I really hope you review with an account because I feel the need to PM you my thanks. _

_I hope you enjoy and kindly review! _

_Love, Evening. :)_

"I'm sorry I didn't write to you sooner," Walter murmured, his black eyes gazing intently at her. "I wrote Rilla tonight, and I meant to write you, too, but now I shan't have the time…" His voice trailed off as he turned his head to the hill.

Una Meredith saw a tall, lank figure with a feathered hat on his head and a pipe in his hands marching over the hill, followed by a troop of boys, unfaltering as they crossed from the Allies' trenches to the German's. She saw one familiar handsome dark head among them, and felt like she must gasp—but she couldn't. She couldn't move; she couldn't breathe.

The night, at Courcelette, was a deep violet, not quite black. It was that indecisive shade in between that seems to always forebode some life-altering happening, whatever it may be. One cannot help but to feel a shiver down the spine when encountering such a night. Not one breath stirred upon that hill, not even from the Canadian boys, and not one creature was in sight. There was only the deep, numbly sweet music that Una refused to believe was coming out of the pipe in the first figure's mouth.

Walter's soft, fine face turned back to hers—oh, it was so close to her own! It was the only thing she could see; it was before her and blocked out everything else.

"I can see the steadfastness in your blue eyes now, Una," he told her, his eloquent eyes flashing and his melting voice tender. "Somehow I can see those eyes very plainly tonight. Keep faith, Una," he said slowly as his voice began to fade away with his face. "We go over the top at dawn. Keep faith."

Una opened her eyes gradually, as if she had been awake all along and was only now choosing to get up. She looked around her, but of course she was in her room, at the manse. But why was it so cold? She pressed her hands to her neck to gain warmth from them, but they, too, were clammy.

Wrapping her kimono around her as tightly as it would go, she rose up from her bed and took a few sluggish steps to the open window. The night sky over the Glen was quiet, but not silent, like at Courcelette. The midnight was a deep, velvety black only illuminated by the moon and the stars, not a violet-black, like at Courcelette.

Her hand moved to her heart involuntarily, as if pressing against it could stop the throbbing ache she was already beginning to feel. She refused to believe that her dream wasn't exactly a dream—but she knew it was. Her eyes showed what was in her heart; the dark blue that had, even before tonight, always seemed so sad and grieving, were full with that indescribable emotion no woman should ever have to feel.

And as she gazed into the breathing night—not dead, like at Courcelette—she held on fiercely to Walter's face which had only moments before appeared before her eyes, so heartbreakingly near she had wanted to reach out and beg him to stay and tell him she had always cared for him, ever since they were children.

Eyes closed and each breath haggard and laboured, she recalled the day they had all gathered to send Walter off.

Carl and Shirley had declared that they, too, would soon be joining their fellows at the trenches, to which, Una saw, her father and Susan paled. And then Walter had shook hands with her.

Una looked at him wistfully, sorrowfully, her eyes unable to hide the pain and ache she felt inside, although she could never tell him what she felt. His own gallant, feeling eyes were brimming with emotion, and he bent his curly head, with the khaki cap she had grown to resent, to kiss her. His mouth was warm on hers, but it was only brotherly, as a comrade would kiss a childhood friend. She could feel that, but for one wonderful, terrible moment all her love showed in her upturned face, but it retreated when he loosened his grip on her arm and went to Rilla.

"God bless you, Rilla-_my_-Rilla," he whispered lovingly to his now-patient sister. Then, as he stepped onto the rear platform, waving to them as the train so cruelly pulled out of the station, Una went to the girl she longed to call sister, and they held each other's icy hands as they gazed after the boy no one could ever love more than they did.

When he was gone at last, Una slipped away from the two families, but without any idea of where she should go. She wanted to go to Rainbow Valley, of course, but Rilla would doubtlessly be there, and she _had _to be alone. A half hour later, she ended up at the Four Winds shore, near Dr and Mrs Blythe's old "House of Dreams", away from Glen St. Mary entirely.

She remembered sitting against a rock on the beach, with her arms curled tightly around her knees. On that first day of Una's enduring, endless vigil of love, the waves stroked her toes, trying to cheer her up, the wind caressed her cheeks, as if to wipe away the tears that weren't there, and she stared out to sea unthinkingly, her eyes pricked but dry, her cheeks pale but dry, her lips silent and dry.

Then, in the evening, she had returned to the manse and carried on as usual. All the women in the Glen did that—they had their own period of mourning, however long that may be, and then carried on as usual, however they might do that. The women, in these three years, had reluctantly but selflessly untied their apron strings and sent off the men they loved, be it friend, brother, beau or son. Mrs Blythe had sent off two sons, her stepmother one, her sister a beau, and now it was she who was to send off…what was he? A brother, perhaps.

Yet the women never lost hope, not entirely. It was they who had made the greatest sacrifice, for, as Rilla said, the boys gave only themselves, while the women gave _them_. In their eyes shined the age-old love that helped them to hold on when there seemed to be nothing to grip, a love that, it seemed, had to be enough to convince the Almighty to send their boys back to them.

Una recalled all this, and much more, as some hidden bird sang a happy little dirge to the happy days of yesterday, the crickets shrilly told of all that went on at the front today, and the frogs croaked hoarsely in a vain attempt to hope for tomorrow, until she thought she would go mad.

Without bothering to take off her kimono, she crawled back between the sheets and closed her eyes, but as soon as that happened, Walter's face became torturously clearer and his poet's voice resounded firmly in her ears, "_Keep faith. We go over the top at dawn. Keep faith. Keep faith…"_

The girl thought she was going to scream if this carried on any further. And why was she acting so cowardly, so silly? It wasn't as if, she told herself sternly, anything was going to happen to Walter. The Blythe and the Meredith boys had, since the first—Jem—had gone off, been taken care of by some stars sent by a higher power Himself.

"Nothing," she said aloud, squeezing her eyes shut, "is going to happen."

But the hands that gripped the covers so violently tossed them aside and the feet belonging to the same maiden sprang up to walk about the room quickly. Una had neither web nor loom, but it was a certainty that "she made three paces through the room", and many more. When finally her legs gave out, she fell into the chair before her desk and, flinging her cold face into her hands, indulged in a good, long cry that had been due and suppressed since Walter's departure.

The weeping brought Rosemary Meredith to her door, but the mother hesitated as she reached for the knob; she had never before heard such strangled sobs. She thought of the thoughtful, ever-wistful girl in the room, and shook her head doubtfully.

Sometimes we hide things so well that even those who love and know us best do not think anything of it, and it was because of this that no one, not even Mr and Mrs Meredith knew the reason why Una cried with such angst that night, when she had never before been known to cry because of the war. No one, except perhaps Rilla, suspected.

However, when a crack appeared in the black sky and the dye from a petal's rose gradually poured from the cup of dawn, Una dried her hollow eyes and picked up the pieces of courage shed the night before to carry on. Already the burning sensation in her chest was beginning to fade, and she started to believe that all that had haunted her mind was merely figments of nothingness.

It was well, then, that she did not hear the faint but unmistakable howling of a dog coming from, it seemed, the train station—or, if she did, that she did not understand the meaning of it.


	3. Rilla

_**Chapter 3: Rilla**_

_Author's Note: Hi again, for the second time today! I really love my work, you see. Susan was fun to write about, but Rilla was harder. The underlined parts are, unfortunately, not owned by me but LMM, and—although this is overdue—I should announce a disclaimer that all characters, even more unfortunately, do not belong to me but to the wonderful LMM._

_I hope you enjoy it, and tell me what you think!_

_Love, Evening. :)_

Earlier that same night, Rilla knelt before her window, her lips shaping the words she was silently uttering to the Lord. Like her mother's first prayer forty years ago, fervour coloured every syllable that came from her mouth. Unlike that inexperienced prayer at Green Gables, though, worry was the only emotion that motivated her words.

When she was finished, she raised her eyes to heaven, where the stars shone steadily instead of their usual twinkling down on the rueful village, and saw, with feeling if not accuracy, the Western Front where her brothers, chums and betrothed—for Mother believed she was really engaged to Ken Ford—were fighting, for country, family and freedom. Right now, Rilla was feeling as if she would gladly give up those three for their boys to be home again.

The hazel eyes, which she had gotten from her father, were full with love, sacrifice and patience. Once upon a time—was it really only three years ago?—they had not the latter two qualities, and not so much of the first. It was with these eyes that Rilla now looked up into the night, and with a sudden but not rare clarity, saw the gush of blood pouring onto the earth, the rush of men from the trenches and the cry of pain escaping the lips of shot soldiers.

"What price has been paid?" asked Rilla through quivering lips.

That morning at breakfast the most splendid news in a long time had come. Rilla, who had answered the 'phone with Jims cradled in the crook of one arm, had received it.

She turned around, eyes gleaming with excitement.

"The Canadians have taken Courcelette and Martenpuich, with many prisoners and guns," she announced, dropping a sunny kiss on the war-baby's forehead.

Mrs Blythe exchanged a look of delight with Miss Cornelia—or, rather, Mrs Elliott. Susan's reaction, however was much less contained.

"About time, too," stoutly declared the faithful maid of Ingleside from her reign in the kitchen. Presently she came out and began tidying the living room with haste but thoroughness. "Took them a whole week! If Haig had put a whole troop of Canadian boys in the first place, now, the battle would be over in one day instead! But no-o-o," she fluffed the pillow with a vengeance, as if it were Haig's poor senses she was beating, "he had to put in a mixture of British and New Zealand fellows, and whatnot!"

"Now, Susan," objected the doctor with dancing eyes, "don't forget that the New Zealand Division did capture the Switch Line after only thirty minutes of fighting. The report in the paper said so." He winked at his wife when she gave him a warning but amused smile.

"The report in the paper said so, Dr dear," repeated Susan, "and I do not doubt that you read rightly, but that report was written by Yankees, and theywrite almost as many lies as the Germans themselves do—if not as many. No number of British or New Zealanders can do what _our _Canadian boys did! Why, they 'saw considerable first day success'," she quoted that same report, completely disregarding her claim of its inaccuracy only a moment ago. "Them Canadian boys, and not any British, New Zealander or Yankee. And," she finished triumphantly," it was the _Canadian_ Division who took Courcelette at last, and not any other country, don't you forget that! It's plain as day Haig knows what soldiers to pick for a hard job, even though it took him some time to realise it, poor man. I shall go out and run up the flag this blessed instant."

After the brief period of joy in which the Blythes rejoiced and exulted in the news, their pride simmered down to a level of cautiousness, for who knew what price had been paid? None of them had forgotten that Walter had been at the battle himself. Susan, though, staunchly refused to have her spirits dampened.

"Just you go and rest, Mrs Dr dear," she commanded of Anne, "and don't you worry one bit about anything. The war will be over and done with soon and our boys will be back, depend upon it, Mrs Dr dear."

Anne smiled weakly and went out to the garden without complaint, as neither Gilbert nor Susan would let her work, as she wanted to.

Now Rilla whispered again to the skies, "Please let our boys come home," and, with a half-formed tearless sob, rushed to her bed and drew the covers over her head in a fashion that was not unlike Jims'. In the place that was now her night's safe haven, her mind, evidently sympathising with her, chased out the horrid images and instead filled itself with pleasant memories of Walter.

Somewhere between recalling Walter pummelling Dan Reese in the long-gone Rainbow Valley days and reliving Walter's words to her on that last day, in Rainbow Valley, she drifted blissfully into peaceful slumber. In her dreams, she saw him as he was, tall, handsome and gentle, and it was in this dream that her mother found her with something of a smile on her sleeping lips.

In that dream, one that she would look back on often, with shiver and sigh, Walter held her in his arms, clad in worn and faded khaki. His face was alight with happiness, but it was not the happiness of yesterday, which echoed mournfully with untarnished laughter, nor was it the half-formed happiness of today that was so wary and suppressed. Instead, it was the fully-fledged glory of tomorrow that has been hard-earned by the fighting for a dream—a fighting of nations brought together by that dream.

"We've won, Rilla," Walter told her with gleaming eyes. "It took years of waiting and suffering, and a lot of learning, but we've won. This is the happiness that belongs to _us_, and only us," he declared. "So many have fought—and died—and are never to return again. You don't know the things we've seen and felt here, Rilla, but that's well. No man should ever have to see that."

"Now you can come back home," she exclaimed eagerly, clutching at his hand. "You can finish your studies at Redmond, with Nan and Di, and we can be happy again." Here was a moment the blithe girl should have laughed, but she could not.

He nodded, comprehending her falter. "But we can still be happy," he said.

Rilla looked at him in confusion and slight alarm. There was something subtly different about his tone of voice, and his eyes. He, like their mother, could never hide anything with his eyes. At the present, their sparkle was as bright as ever, but in that one fleeting moment something about it had changed, just like in one unheeding instant one finds that the day had passed from dusk to night.

"Walter?" she whispered, gripping his roughened hands tighter.

"We can still be happy," he repeated, still smiling. "I once dreamed of being a great world-renowned poet, Rilla. But that isn't to be. Providence saw to that." He held her hands between his, and regretted having to break the heart of one who had such beautiful eyes. "This wasn't just any war—it was a call of awakening, Rilla, asking us to question our deepest beliefs and rooted fears. We have fought for tomorrow, and we have won the right to live it…with a price paid," he added under his breath.

Before she could say anything further, he straightened up and reluctantly began to release her hands.

"Goodbye, Rilla-my-Rilla," he murmured, and kissed her cheek fondly.

Rilla was, in all honesty, unable to move or say anything, not even as her brother walked away from where they were standing outside of Ingleside, towards Rainbow Valley. But in her eyes burned all the torment felt by a man watching a noose being tied and not knowing whether it was meant for him—for, after all, it is worse to not know one's fate than to know and expect and prepare for it.

Then, before he disappeared entirely from her sight, he turned his head, now freed from the khaki cap, back towards Rilla and smiled one last, loving smile.

When Rilla awakened in the morning dawn was only just beginning to break, and the only thing of the dream that lingered in her mind was that smile as Walter left—around yet another bend in the road. Her creamy eyelids still thick with sleep, she looked out her window with appreciative eyes, all anguish from the previous night gone as she saw the golden waves rise from beyond the hills, and the silvery-pink of a yawning tongue chase away the dark ferocity of the night—until she heard distinctly a dog howling in a melancholy way down in the direction of the station. Was it Dog Monday? And if it were, why was he howling like that? Rilla shivered; the sound had something boding and grievous in it. She remembered that Miss Oliver said once, when they were coming home in the darkness and heard a dog howl, "When a dog cries like that the Angel of Death is passing." Rilla listened with a curdling fear at her heart. It was Dog Monday–she felt sure of it. Whose dirge was he howling–to whose spirit was he sending that anguished greeting and farewell?

Suddenly it all came rushing back to her—the battle at Courcelette the day before, the dream that began to croon ominously in her ear a tune that, although unfamiliar to her, willed her to fall into step behind the one who played it, wherever it may take her. Rilla went back to bed but did not sleep. She knew, of course, what the tune was and what it signified, and that knowledge haunted her for the day. It took her some time to forget, or at least not think about, all that had passed that night and morning, and on the fifth day all of it would make agonising sense to her.


	4. Waiting

_**Chapter 4: Waiting**_

_Author's Note: Hello! This chapter was heart-breaking, and personally I love the Anne/Gilbert part in it (don't we all?), and, like Susan in the previous chapter, Miss Cornelia delighted me. I wish she still hated men, so I could insert a killing little speech about "wasn't that just like a man?", but as the beginning of _Rilla of Ingleside _tells us, she is no longer "a virulent man-hater", and "had actually taken to match-making in her declining years (sigh!)."_

_Disclaimer: I only own the amusing Mr and Mrs Ewan MacAllister, and Dan MacAllister. That is, unless they appeared somewhere in the series as forgettable extras. Abbie Flagg is, if you remember, mentioned in _Rilla of Ingleside _as Dr Blythe's rheumatic patient. Oh, and the underlined parts are, again, from _Rilla of Ingleside _and thus belong to LMM._

_I hope you enjoy it and I'd be thrilled to hear from you! When I saw that I had new reviews I literally squealed and leaped up and clicked on the link. Then I saw all your beautiful, lovely compliments and I squeaked and smiled and, most importantly, laughed and rolled on my bed for so long I thought I had gone mad. Yes, I am a rookie—that's why I'm so insensible with compliments. **Thank you for the bottom of my heart, more than you will ever know!**_

_Love, Evening. :) _

The station-master scratched his head as he and the youngest Blythe girl looked at little Dog Monday, lying in his kennel with his head laid morosely on his paws. He would not touch the food Rilla had brought him.

"That dog of yours howled from midnight to sunrise something weird," he told her. I dunno what got into him. I got up once and went out and hollered at him but he paid no 'ttention to me. He was sitting all alone in the moonlight out there at the end of the platform, and every few minutes the poor lonely little beggar'd lift his nose and howl as if his heart was breaking. He never did it afore—always slept in his kennel real quiet and canny from train to train. But he sure had something on his mind last night."

"I'm afraid he's sick," she said anxiously. But what she was even more afraid of was that there was a reason why he had howled so. Again, she tried to coax him to go back to Ingleside with her, but Dog Monday said apologetically, "I'm terribly sorry, but my master is coming back anytime soon, you know, and I have to be here to meet him—I told him so myself."

"I guess he's going to stay and wait for Jem," laughed Rilla with a catch in her throat. But the old station-master saw her eyes and, when she was gone, muttered to himself that the "dumb old creetur" was never going home, far 's he could see.

On her way back Rilla ran into Una, whose night-blue eyes, she thought, were so much sadder than ever that she felt sure of the secret suspicion she had always harboured, and wished she had told Walter before he had left, thinking that he wasn't leaving any girl to break her heart about him.

"Have you had any news from Walter?" asked Una quietly.

Rilla shook her head, squeezing her hand sympathetically. "I'll tell you when I do," she promised.

Una only nodded and went on her way.

When Rilla returned to Ingleside, Anne was vehemently knitting war socks in the sofa before the fireplace, with Miss Cornelia furiously sewing a pretty baby's dress, with frills and tucks galore, beside her.

"Oh, I know it isn't at all economical during the war, Anne dearie," she admitted, eyes and hands never leaving her work. "But young Mrs Andrews is expecting her first baby, and they are poor as Job's turkey, believe _me_. What with Jim Andrews gone to the war and she having to work on the farm as much as she can, she doesn't have a spare second to make anything pretty for the poor girl, that's what."

Once upon a time, Anne mused, forgetting her worry for a moment, Miss Cornelia would have followed with a "He had to go to the war, just like a man!", but even if Miss Cornelia didn't, albeit reluctantly, admit that young men _had _to go off to the war, she was no longer the lethal man-hater as she once was. The kind old soul, though, could see that poor Anne was distracted, with good reason, and resolved to set things right.

"Where is the doctor?" asked Miss Cornelia.

"Up at Abbie Flagg's, I believe," Anne sighed. "I wish he could be around more—I need him and he needs more rest, but the Glen folk can't do without him, you know."

She _did _know, and nodded in agreement. "Little did they think anyone could do better than old Doctor Dave when the two of you young lovers came, Anne dearie. Oh, he did rule the roost all right! But the doctor's fine as anyone ever comes, and there's not one person in the whole Glen who would say otherwise. Except," she added grudgingly, "Ewan MacAllister over-harbour, now. _He _is dying, and that's the only reason he lets Dr Blythe see him."

"Mrs Ewan MacAllister doesn't dislike Gilbert, though," remarked Anne, caught up despite herself.

"Oh, she doesn't, all right," Miss Cornelia sniffed. "She's seventy if she's a day, and she still does her hair up whenever old Ewan takes a sick spell. Thinks she's good enough for the doctor! But she was a Crawford, and the Crawfords were always thinking too much of themselves. When _she _needs Dr Blythe, she'll be sitting sick as can be in her new nightgown from Charlottetown, believe _me_."

At this moment Gilbert came in and hung up his hat. Dropping onto the sofa next to his wife of twenty-odd years, he gave her a kiss.

"How's poor Abbie Flagg's rheumatism, Gilbert?" she asked, looking up from her knitting.

"It doesn't get any better," reported the doctor glumly. "But I just came from over the harbour. Old Ewan MacAllister's taken yet another sick spell," he sighed.

Anne exchanged a sly smile with Miss Cornelia.

"And how is Mrs MacAllister's hair?" Anne inquired cheekily. "Is it as thick as ever?"

"What do you mean?" asked the mystified Gilbert. "Mrs MacAllister wasn't there—it was Dan MacAllister who called for me."

When Miss Cornelia had gone, Anne and Gilbert took a walk in the garden behind their house. The leaves were beginning to turn the brilliant red and yellow, and already the grass was littered with those whose time had come. The evening sun was becoming a fiery orange, the white clouds, seeped in its contagious hue, moving away from it.

"I remember," murmured Anne to Gilbert, "how I once said I was so grateful I lived in a world with Octobers. I still am, darling. But when I used to look forward to spring and October, I now only look forward to going to bed, because once I'm safely there I realise that the day's passed with no bad news, and we're all safe, at least until the next day."

Gilbert rubbed her slender shoulder. "No bad news has come today," he reminded her with a hope he did not feel. "And for all we know, bad news might not come tomorrow, either. Come, let's take 'an old-time ramble through the woods'."

Anne smiled at the recollection of the day before the anniversary of their happiness, when Gilbert had come to Green Gables with that very greeting upon his lips. Doctor and wife wandered away from Ingleside and walked in the beauty of the approaching twilight.

"It's still beautiful to live in this world, isn't it, Anne-girl?" said Gilbert softly, holding her hand as she stared dreamily into the sky from where they were sitting under an apple tree. He saw with satisfaction that the old fanciful sparkle was back in her wide, grey-green eyes, and colour was in her cheeks. Even her hands were clasped in her lap, like in days of yore. Lately, the doctor had noticed gravely that his wife was too pale and too thin, a condition worsened by her constant working. Could it be, he had wondered, that this suffering woman was the same carefree Anne of Green Gables? But now he did not doubt it, for Anne was as Anne-like as he could ever wish her to be at this moment.

"Paul once told me how the twin sailors of his rock-people had sailed into the sunset," she said with far-away eyes. "I'm imagining that I'm standing right before the setting sun—no, don't tell me that my eyes will be blinded—and I realise, with horror, that the sun is actually drowning—that it drowns into the sea every night, and every day the fiery globe we see is a new one, which is why it always seems to be different. And then," she breathed, "I wonder if, today, I can save this sun from setting, so it doesn't have to die."

"But you don't, Anne," Gilbert said gently, laying his hand over hers lovingly. "As much as you'd like to rescue the sun, even if it's just this once, you don't. Deep down, you know that it cannot escape the route that fate has laid out for it, that it is supposed to die after the course of one day, like all those before and after it."

Anne looked up at him with agonised eyes, whose shine was made brighter by the tears in her eyes, and he held her close in his arms as she sobbed fiercely.

That night, in her room, Rilla was again kneeling before her window, her eyes fixed on the stars above. She had finished saying her prayers, but she felt as though she hadn't yet finished praying. She couldn't banish from her mind the terrible thoughts of the night before, and the day thus far. It's almost as if, thought Rilla bitterly, the night is taunting us—and fate—with its peacefulness.

"I can't stand not knowing," cried Rilla at last. "Why don't we know anything, if there is anything to know at all?"

Behind her came a pathetic little sob for "Willa", and she realised she must have woken the sleeping Jims. She bent over his crib and, lifting him from it, crushed him to her chest.

"Willa," sobbed Jims, his arms a deadlock around her neck, "Willa, Willa, Willa."

"Don't cry," she tried to soothe him. "I'm sorry I frightened you, Jims. Hush, now." She began to croon his favourite lullaby, rocking him in her arms, and gradually his grievous tears dried and his sobs became half-hiccups.

Miss Oliver quietly pushed open the door and came in, wrapped in her kimono.

"I'm sorry Jims woke you, Miss Oliver," Rilla apologised in a low voice, slowly laying Jims down. "I frightened him and he started to cry," she sighed.

"No, it wasn't that," Gertrude assured her, sitting down on her bed. "I wasn't asleep, either. It's a wonder if anyone can sleep the moment they lie down on their bed these days, Rilla. Sometimes I wonder at the torture those moments before sleep finds us," she said with a flash of her dark eyes. "Those moments I cannot do anything but see the men in the trenches, wherever they are, rushing onwards for a tomorrow they _will not _see; I see Robert getting shot—falling over—trampled over—and left to die, just like that."

"Don't, Miss Oliver, don't!" cried Rilla in a choked voice, pressing her hands to her face with a shudder to smother her involuntary sobs. "I can't think it—I won't think it!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Rilla dear," Miss Oliver exclaimed, gathering the girl in a warm embrace. "There are times, you know, when that horrible façade we have to put on in front of others slip off, and—this happens." There hadn't been much sleep for the clever, striking dark girl since the day the false news of Robert Grant's death had been brought to her. Although she had long since gotten over the fright of the alarm, the incident had brought to her a deeper realisation of the closeness of death, a knowledge that never left her, even when others saw her courage during the day.

The door was pushed open again, and now Anne came in, alarmed by the weeping she had heard.

"We must bear it, dear," she said simply, holding her daughter's slim white hand in hers.

Together, the three women went through the heartache that, although different to everyone, was similar in the love that always accompanies it. It was a heartache no one drowning in its tumultuous waves can comprehend, and the only solace they can gain from it is that God above knows best, and they must trust him with their hearts and lives.


	5. Gilbert

_**Chapter 5: Gilbert**_

_Author's Note: There, done! This was my favourite to write, and also the hardest. I needed to give Gilbert some very much-deserved attention, and I felt this chapter the most, coming closer to crying than I did before while writing. It's so pitiful—but there, I won't spoil it for you. If you cried, do let me know, for I should be proud to think that I moved someone by my writing._

_Disclaimer: Only Miss Elise Clow and Ewan MacAllister, in this chapter, belong to me, and the underlined parts belong to LMM (however much I wish I could take credit for them), taken from one of the paragraphs that thrilled me the most._

_I hope you enjoy and tell me what you think by reviewing! (Oh dear, I've become one of those authors who pester for reviews. Oh, well—if you write, too, you'd know why!)_

_Love, Evening. :)_

Gilbert stood in front of the bedroom window thoughtfully as Anne prepared for bed behind him. His mind was wandering, something it didn't often do, and he was reliving the first time he had scolded Walter. Thanks be, thought the doctor, that he had never _spanked _Walter—but then the boy had never been mischievous enough for such a punishment. That day, six-year-old Walter hadn't come home for dinner. At first he and Anne thought that perhaps, like Anne when she was young, he was lost in fairy-land, with his own airy, unearthly dreams, and hadn't realised the late hour, so by way of punishment the family had dinner themselves.

But when the orange stain of the sky drained away to the west and intensifying purple crept out like a thief out on its first-time quest, Anne was beside herself with worry, and so was Gilbert. He and Jem set off to "the Hollow", with fear written on even the latter's brow, for young Jem was fond of his brother, and had to try very hard to cower into his father's side at the thought that something—anything—had happened to him.

Jem directed his father to Walter's favourite nook, a white, proud birch that he called the White Lady, and under the sad, sad face of the moon Gilbert saw his son lying, fainted, it seemed, underneath the tree.

Jem shrieked, and broke into wild sobs, but he saw the look on his father's face—a white look, paler than pale, entered his handsome face and stayed there, his eyes horrified and fearful, as he swept Walter up and headed for home—and never forgot it. Gilbert didn't say a word, but little Jem, although he didn't quite understand the expression on Dad's face, knew it was something terr'ble. He clung tightly to Dad's long pants, until, without jostling the bundle in his arms, he crouched down and told him to climb onto his shoulders and hold on tight. In this fashion, they reached Ingleside, where Anne was pacing the living room with a pale face.

"Oh, what's happened to him?" she cried when Gilbert strode into the front door. He lay the dark-haired boy onto the sofa gently, and felt his pulse and breathing motion with practised hands.

"He doesn't seem to be sick," he said finally through trembling lips, patting Walter down as he spoke. His hands came upon a bulge in his pants, and he froze for a moment before drawing it out.

"What's that?" Anne asked sharply, stopping in her motions of wringing out a towel for her son's forehead.

"Sleeping pills," Gilbert realised, reading the label with a sharp breath, horror building up inside him. "How many has he taken?"

Anne's hand flew to her mouth as Gilbert checked his forehead, breathing and temperature once again—and again.

"Gilbert," she whispered urgently.

"He can't have taken more than two," the doctor concluded at last. "He'll wake up in tomorrow morning; I think he's been out for at least three hours already. At any rate, he's not in any danger."

"Oh, thank goodness," whispered Anne fervently, her hand pressed to her heart. "Whatever could have made him do such a thing?"

Neither of them had taken any notice of the redheaded boy squatting in a corner of the room, who spoke up now.

"Is Walter—dead?" he asked in a choked, hoarse voice.

Anne flew to her son, and swept him up with a kiss on his wet cheek. "No, darling, he isn't; he's just asleep," she assured him.

"But it isn't even his bedtime yet," Jem protested, scowling. "We promised to read Captain Jim's life-book together tonight. Can you wake him up?"

"'Fraid not, Jem," said his father now, scooping Walter up. "He'll be sleeping with me and Mummy tonight." Anne nodded. "Will you be fine on your own?"

"'Course I'll be," Jem answered indignantly. "I'm 'most eight now, I'm not afraid of sleeping alone!" But ten minutes after being put to bed Jem crept to Dad and Mummy's room under the pretence that he was worried for Walter, and spent the night there. Anne and Gilbert, though, did not sleep as the same mournful moon shone down on Walter's face and lit it with a faint yellow glow. They talked together in low tones as they kept a vigilant watch over their son.

Then, a little before morning, Walter's white eyelids, drowsy with unnatural sleep, fluttered and opened to see two anxious pair of eyes, one grey and the other hazel, stare down into his.

"Mummy? Dad?"

Anne was so overcome with relief that she caught the unsuspecting boy up and held his little body tightly to hers.

"Where are my wings?" he asked, looking at his arms with wide, confused black eyes.

"What wings, darling?" his mother asked, just as confused.

"My wings…Laurie Drew told me if I et two white pills and then jump up and down under a tree at five o'clock I can grow wings and fly like a bird, so I got to Dad's office and got this box of pills and I et two of 'em," confessed the unthinking transgressor. "Where are my wings?"

Anne's eyes grew wide with shock and then narrowed with wrath.

"Why, that Laurie Drew—" she choked, before Gilbert rubbed her shoulder soothingly.

The father explained as simply and clearly as he could the lack of science in that theory, and proceeded to severely tell Walter off about meddling in his office, until Anne cuddled the boy, with his head hanging pathetically, on her knee and said it was all right, as long as he promised to never do it again, because did he know how frightened Dad and Mummy was?

A warm hand and an affectionate kiss on his cheek brought Gilbert back to the present, and he smiled down at Anne.

Four whole days had passed since Anne's unexplained fright on that night, and the Ingleside people had begun to be cheerful again, having recovered from the alarm little Dog Monday's herald of the passing of a certain Angel had brought. The doctor did not ponder it for long, as he, mercifully, had a lot of work to do about the Glen, which often kindly took his mind off the horrors of war, after the reality of it forced itself upon him at breakfast. But as much as he wished the same blissful ignorance, however short-lived, upon his wife, he would not let her work herself to death.

"Have I ever told you how beautiful you look with that moonbeam striking down on your red hair, Anne o' mine?" he said, holding her hands between his.

Anne laughed. "The only thing I heard in that otherwise beautiful compliment, Gilbert, is your assertion that my hair is red." She wound her braid around her finger ruefully. "I even welcome these strands of grey just to hide some of the red. If you had called it auburn, now, or at least pretty, like the day you saved me at the pond,"—Gilbert allowed a laugh at the old memory—"I wouldn't mind. Every time you say red hair, though, all I can think about is breaking another slate over your head." They both laughed at this.

"You know I love your red hair," Gilbert chuckled at the face she made, "because nothing else would suit you, not even auburn. Not Diana's glossy black, which you used to admire, Ruby's yellow, or even Leslie's living gold. And besides," he laughed, "I never got the chance to tell you that carrots are my favourite vegetable, so, you see, that grudge-preserving comment the other day was really a compliment."

The two laughed in a happy moment stolen from the past, and cherished it as, with a kiss, they went to bed.

When the new-born pinkish sunrise morphed into a clear, austere azure, the mail arrived, and as Gilbert went downstairs with Anne, they heard Rilla singing in a clear, sweet voice as she helped Susan prepare breakfast in the kitchen. As Anne cooed over little Jims, he paced tensely before the door, waiting for the paper to come. She came over to him and slipped her hand into his calmly.

"Just stop for a moment and smell the air, Gilbert," she said gently. "Smell the freshness, the life, the sweet breath of every flower that ever blossomed in the world—and hope. There's hope yet, Gilbert!" She pressed his hand eagerly as he smiled down at the flower-like face he loved so dearly.

But even the breath of the cheerful hydrangeas on the dining table could not persuade Gilbert to not frown over the morning paper.

"The Battle of Morval was launched yesterday," he reported, "and it's quite likely that they will fight for Thiepval Ridge soon, too."

"Give them to the Canadians" was Susan's emphatic advice.

"Experts say that the Somme Offensive is in its final stages," added the doctor.

"They've been saying it since the first of July," remarked Susan significantly, "and in myopinion, although I don't know what it amounts to after the _experts_ have spoken, they would've been right if they'd put the Canadians there right in the very beginning."

"If the Canadians had been put there in July we'd be seeing a longer list of casualties," said Gertrude bitterly. "I _don't _care when the Somme Offensive ends, as long as our boys come back unharmed—but they will," she added hastily upon seeing Mrs Blythe's white face.

"Now, now, Miss Oliver," said Susan calmly. "It's natural to feel that way, and although my patriotism might get in the way, I agree with what you say as well. When all is said and done, Doctor dear," she confessed with a huge bite of humble pie, "General Haig _is _more fit to lead the battalion than I am, and ever will be, though you would think otherwise from his dilly-dallying about the Somme battle."

That afternoon, Gilbert was again at old Ewan MacAllister's, attending to a "damned ache 'round the heart" that, old Ewan was convinced, meant his time had come. After successfully persuading him to take his medication as prescribed, and not in twice the dosage in order to "git and tell 'em ole Brit fools how to end the darned war afore all the boys git killed", he went home to find Anne sewing for the Red Cross, where he was just in time to answer the telephone.

Upon receiving the telegram that came, his knees buckled and he clutched the armchair near him for support. A lump rose up in his throat and he could only draw in one uneven deep breath. A flaming pain pricked his eyes, but no tears came; he tried to compose his face for his wife's sake, and when he was fairly sure he was under control, he knelt in front of Anne and in a voice that didn't belong to him told her what she already knew.

A low, pained moan escaped her lips, and, dropping the work in her hands, she lurched forwards, falling onto her knees into Gilbert's arms. She could not contain the tears that reached her eyes and, "like the distant torrent's fall", streamed down her cold cheeks as she buried her face, with all blood drained from it, in his chest and stifled the tortured sobs that threatened to engulf both of them. His own breathing was shallow and haggard, and although his eyes were tearless, he bent his head into the masses of her hair and held her tightly, the two of them submerged in an agony no parent ever deserved to feel, an anguish that gripped them by the shoulders and shook and shook, only to be replaced by a squeezing, throbbing ache around their hearts that would stay there for all eternity.

When he had put a restless, exhausted Anne to bed, Gilbert descended the staircase slowly, with heavy steps. The afternoon was golden still, with a pleasant autumn breeze sifting through the leaves of the trees and the blades of the grass, to which the blossoming flowers in the Ingleside garden swayed in a slow waltz. Yet everything about it seemed mournful to him; the golden was not a proud, shining glow but dying blaze that was forced to persist till night time; the breeze seemed to be a grieving mother running her gentle fingers through the hair of her children; the flowers danced as a troop of dryads would sway, with their heads bowed and their arms linked, around a lonely, forgotten grave.

At this moment, Rilla came in from Rainbow Valley, her hands full of the dahlias of the fall. Her hazel eyes—his own eyes—were bright and momentarily cheerful from her afternoon rest, her cheeks pink with the delight of the season. When Gilbert went to her, his face grey and drawn and old, held her slim figure tenderly by the shoulders and told her that Walter had been killed in action at Courcelette she crumpled into a pitiful little heap of merciful unconsciousness in his arms. Nor did she waken to her pain for many hours.


	6. In the Days Beyond

_**Chapter 6: In the Days Beyond**_

_Author's Note: __**Happy New Year! **__I'm dreadfully sorry; I honestly meant to post this yesterday, on the eve, but can you believe it—I had absolutely no opportunity to do so. Anyway, here it is. And once again, thank you all for your wonderful response, although I shan't bother you with PMs_—though you can with me if you want.__

_This is the last chapter (sob!). It was wonderful to write, just like the rest of the story, and I'm glad that I'm already working on another fanfic I'm going to name _Blossoming Madonna. _I do hope you'll read it as well. I shan't tell you anything else till I post the first chapter and, if you're interested, you can read the summary, but those who are more acquainted with _Rilla of Ingleside _will recognise the reference made in the title. _

_Why is my second fanfic also based on _Rilla of Ingleside_? Besides the fact that it's exquisitely poignant, I also think that it touches on several romances only briefly, which, although it is LMM's style, throughout the whole series, we love so much, gives us much more "scope for imagination"!_

_Anyway, as always, I hope you enjoy and review (by that I'm not ordering you to review, but saying that I hope you enjoy and I hope you review. Just in case I come across as a tyrant). I'm also sorry this chapter is shorter than the last—I'm disappointed with myself as, if you've noticed, each chapter save this is longer than the previous by an average of 200 words. Okay, I'll let you read now._

_Love, Evening. :)_

_P.S. Disclaimer (so very sorry!): I do not own anything or anyone (__**sigh**__) and the underlined (fragments of) sentences were lifted from LMM's _Rilla of Ingleside_._

_P.P.S. Have any of you ever encountered this? People, when they see my book _Rilla of Ingleside_, ask me if it's a romance. I suspect that it's because of the cover illustration (mine, is the _Special Collector's Edition_, unfortunately setting it apart from the rest of the series) of a young, lovelorn-looking beauty, with a handsome khaki-clad lad standing a little ways behind her. Oh, and the grave full moon, and the romance of the whole scene in general—I would love to describe it in detail, but I suppose many of you have it and now I'm babbling and I'm so sorry and I will leave to read the chapter now and—and—and—sorry. _

_P.P.P.S. But do answer my P.P.S. question! I shan't even bother to apologise._

Anne tossed and turned feverishly, thin white hands clutching the covers laid so carefully over her. Gilbert lay a cool hand over her forehead and, registering no change in her alarmingly high temperature, brushed her hair back behind her neck and caressed her cheek gently. Her face was covered with a sickening sheen of sweat.

Susan, watching wordlessly from the door, shook her head as she stalked downstairs to the kitchen. "Two weeks," she muttered to herself as she let Dr Jekyll out with a severe thump. "Two—whole—weeks, barely eating or drinking or even _sleeping_. And that poor Doctor will kill himself taking care of her—if worrying about her doesn't do the job first. How General Haig managed to get Walter, of all people, killed I cannot fathom, but if that's how he does his job then I _wonder_," she said bitterly, "what sense, if any, those British have."

Back in their room, Gilbert was sitting beside his bed with his forehead leaning on his clenched fists. This scene reminded him dreadfully of the time he had fallen sick after college, except that he had a sneaking suspicion such a speedy recovery as his was not to be hoped for. Anne—his Anne—the Anne whom he had vowed to make happy and keep all sorrow away from—was lying on the bed, ill from grief and shock, and there was absolutely nothing he could do.

"Gilbert," Anne moaned, and he reached for her immediately. "Gilbert."

He held her frail hand in his and pressed it to his lips. "What is it, sweetheart?"

"Gilbert, I've lost—two children," she whispered, tears coming to her eyes again, her breath, already laboured, becoming broken as she drew it in, like a wave crashing repeatedly on a rocky shore. "Two, Gilbert. They're all—gone—for all we know—Jem might not come back, either. And Shirley," her eyelids fluttered tiredly, "Shirley wants to go—I see it in his eyes every day, Gilbert—Gilbert, _don't _let him go," she pleaded woefully.

The doctor put his hand on the side of her wet cheek as her weak sobs broke out; Anne was tired of trying to be strong—what was the point, she wanted to scream, when being strong didn't help to get her son back? Walter of the soulful dark eyes, the soft black curls, the beautiful white face, the sensitive nature; Walter the blossoming poet—buried among the violent, bloody corpses lying, horrifyingly lifeless, on foreign soil.

"Gilbert," she cried pitifully.

He bent his brown head over hers, his own eyes burning with grief. "Anne, look at me." When she did, however, he could not speak. Those eyes were the eyes of a woman watching the ruin of the world without any hope of doing anything to help; those eyes reminded him of the day in the House of Dreams, when their cherished dream, which Anne had fostered for so long, was broken, resulting in Anne plummeting into "the depths of despair". Little Joy had come and gone, taking her young mother's laughter with her for a painfully long period of time, and changed her life, her eyes, her smile and everything about her, in one day.

Gilbert, unable to help himself, buried his own face in his strong hands as the tears he had kept in for so long, lest Anne should feel worse, let themselves out, and he heard his own strangled sobs.

"Anne," he said resolvedly through his tears, "don't forget what you told me—smell the hope in the air. There's hope yet, Anne," he said fiercely, clasping her hand tightly and vowing to himself that he would never let go. "There's hope yet," he repeated in a whisper.

Downstairs, Rilla had just received Walter's letter—the last that he would ever write. She carried it unopened to Rainbow Valley and read it there, in the spot where she had had her last talk with him. Her hands trembled as she unsealed the envelope and unfolded the smooth sheet of paper—which, she thought resentfully, _must _be as much stained with blood as Walter's death. It is a strange thing to read a letter after the writer is dead—a bitter-sweet thing, in which pain and comfort are strangely mingled. As her lips silently shaped out the words penned by Walter's hands on the day before he was killed, she heard each word read out in his velvet voice and seep into her heart and embrace it in a loving yet sore gesture. She cherished each word and thrilled to it—not as she, among so many others, did to _The Piper_, but in a way that made her realise that Walter, of the glorious gift and splendid ideals, _still lived_, with just the same gift and just the same ideals. _That _could not be destroyed—_these _could suffer no eclipse. "Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade," thought Rilla, for Walter was _not _dead, even though any tangible link with this earth, this world and this life might say otherwise. Walter could never be dead, not while others fought—died for—and lived for the _Idea _he spoke so fervently of. Mother had once said that "our dead are never dead to us till we forget them", and so Walter would never be dead to her, for she could _never _forget him.

Rilla read and re-read the letter written on the eve of Courcelette, which was destined to be remembered down in history as one of the greatest Canadian battles in that war, as well as one of the greatest missions of bloodshed in the course of those five years. She remembered her strange, almost precognitive dream, from which she had awakened to Dog Monday's knowing howl. She felt no tears—no, she could not cry, but she had a queer little ache in her heart that she knew the meaning of, and almost welcomed, for it helped her to feel Walter's presence as keenly as she would ever be able to.

There was a new light on her pale young face when she finally stood up, amid the asters Walter had loved, with the sunshine of autumn around her. For the moment at least, she was lifted above pain and loneliness.

"I will keep faith, Walter," she said steadily. "I will work—and teach—and learn—and _laugh_, yes, I will even laugh—through all my years, because of you and because of what you gave when you followed the call."

If there is ever a defining moment when our soul changes for ever, however infinitesimally, and becomes _better _and more enduring, like the pivotal instant when a caterpillar breaks out of the cocoon to unfold its wings, which it had been nurturing for that very moment, this was Rilla's. No life is ever the same once the scythe of the Reaper of Death has touched it, no matter how many heartbreaks and heartaches one has already undergone. Rilla, in those past three years, had seen three chums, two brothers and one sweetheart off, and although those happenings had helped to shape her character, death changed it more than they ever could. From that moment on, Rilla Blythe was no longer a girl—she had become a woman, with patience enough for suffering, and love enough for sacrifice.

She brought the letter to Una, which she would have done just the same, for her sake, even if Walter hadn't asked her to.

Una was wearing white, for in the eyes of others, she had no cause to wear black, desolate though she was. She had heard of Walter's death, of course, and had grieved with the Blythes along with her family, who still suspected nothing of her emotions.

She read the letter with a dull ache and dry eyes. She had not cried over Walter's death, not since the night she had seen him in her dreams, unwitting that it was already his absolute going, not as before, she was weeping about.

She could not suppress a shiver as she heard the words, spoken in Walter's voice excruciatingly clearly, from the dream that was to haunt her for the rest of her life, for after his death—which Rilla said had been immediate and painless—he had said to her the very words he had written in his last letter to Rilla—to both of them.

"I meant to write Una tonight, too," she read, "but I won't have time now. Read this letter to her and tell her it's really meant for you both—you two dear, fine loyal girls. Tomorrow, when we go over the top, I'll think of you both—your laughter, Rilla-my-Rilla, and the _steadfastness _in Una's blue eyes—somehow I see those eyes very plainly tonight, too. Yes, you'll both keep faith—I'm sure of that—you and Una. And so—goodnight. We go over the top at dawn."

"And she heard the dead man say", "I can see the steadfastness in your blue eyes now, Una. Somehow I can see those eyes very plainly tonight. Keep faith, Una," he said slowly as his voice began to fade away with his face behind her eyelids. "We go over the top at dawn. Keep faith."

Una was utterly composed—so perfectly that it was no wonder only the young sensitive Rilla knew of her carefully-hidden fancy for Walter—but Rilla saw her eyes—her eyes were the eyes of a woman stricken to the heart, who yet must not cry out or ask for sympathy. Having read the letter, she held it back to Rilla, although she wished so much to keep it for herself—but she could not—what right had she to take away the last token such a sister would ever receive from a beloved brother?

Rilla, however, did not take it from her hands.

"Una, would you like to have this letter—to keep?" she asked slowly.

"Yes, if you can give it to me," Una said dully.

"Then—you may have it," said Rilla hurriedly.

"Thank you," said Una. She could not trust herself to say anything more, but Rilla seemed to be satisfied with her sacrifice and know that she had given Una as great a gift as she could ever hope to receive.

Una took the letter and when Rilla had gone she pressed against her lonely lips. Holding it gingerly, as if it was wont to disappear into the mist to join its writer, she walked slowly to the Four Winds shore to mourn for her love. The tangy smell in the ocean that had always, to her, seemed to be the fragrance of a grieving woman was strong in the air, and the wind, like on the first day, blew against her cheek in the gesture of a caring friend. As dusk's palette of colour overturned with a great groan from the sun, she was certain now that the fancy she had always harboured for Walter Blythe, even in the Rainbow Valley days, was love—it had silently, of its own accord, blossomed into that awesome admiration that brings two people together in life—and in death.

Staring into the sea, and picturing Walter before her, smiling as if he loved her, Una knew that love would never come into her life now—it was buried for ever under the blood-stained soil "Somewhere in France". Once upon a time she had still dared to hope—to believe that someday Walter would know of her regard and return it—a dream that she had always thought of with all the sweetness and poignancy that every woman who waits at home for her sweetheart at war feels—that was gone now for Una, gone for ever. She loved Walter and no one else. No one but herself—and perhaps Rilla—knew it—would ever know it. She had no right in the eyes of her world to grieve. She must hide and bear her long pain as best she could—alone. But she, too, would keep faith.


End file.
